


you were a presence full of light upon this earth (and i am a witness to your life and to its worth)

by awkwardspiritanimals



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Skye and Trip are mentioned, but their presence is significant enough to list them, in addition the romantic tilt to the Fitzsimmons is slight, mentions of possible memory loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:36:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2256105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardspiritanimals/pseuds/awkwardspiritanimals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wants to remember every single story they have, because she will tell him every single one of them instead of letting him go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you were a presence full of light upon this earth (and i am a witness to your life and to its worth)

It’s been eight days now. She’s spent the majority of that time at his bedside, and the others seem to understand. Skye and Trip have worked out some kind of schedule so that she spends some time alone with him and some time with the two of them sitting next to her, coaxing her into eating or sleeping or talking.

She talks about him a lot. They’ve been beside each other for nearly a decade now, and they have many stories, and she wants to remember every single one of them. She needs to remember every single one of them. Trip and Skye seem to understand, and both of them are good listeners in their own way. Skye is full of questions and jokes and observations as Jemma talks, their voices mingling; it’s not the same as telling stories with Fitz, their words twining around and through each other so easily, but there’s a familiarity in it that helps. And Trip trades her stories, of his grandfather, of his parents, from his own life, takes at least part of her mind off the current situation at five minute intervals.

She wants them to understand him, too; Jemma knows that both of them like Fitz, even Trip, who had only known him for a little while before everything happened. But she wants them to understand him too, at least a little, her brilliant best friend.

So she tells them about seeking him out when she didn’t understand a physics lecture and realized that he might be the only one in the entire class who had. How he had spoken maybe four words to her in the first two weeks they’d known each other that didn’t have to do with their homework. They knew goofy, awkward, funny Fitz who sometimes said the wrong thing because he had never quite mastered talking to people completely, but she had met quiet, nervous, young Fitz, who was brilliant and who had spent his entire life looking for someone to understand him. She had loved that Fitz, and she’d loved watching him become the Fitz they knew.

She tells them about his mum and the house he’d grown up in back in Glasgow, both of which he took extreme pride in, and every story about the Academy and Sci-Ops she can think of, and her and Skye tell Trip stories about their time on the Bus before he had shown up. Those are harder, Ward’s betrayal splashed across them, but they tell the stories anyway, because they’re good stories and important stories. Jemma even tells them some stories she wasn’t a part of, things Fitz has told her about his life growing up or his time at MIT. She won’t let him fade from her memory or from theirs; she refuses to let him go.

But when they tell her that she’s a hero, that she saved him, she can only tell them that it’s the other way around. She can’t tell them the story of those desperate minutes at the bottom of the ocean, cannot describe the look on Fitz’s face in the dim emergency lights as he gave his life for hers, cannot explain the hollow, fragile feeling that had settled in her chest as he turned to hit the button to doom himself, the feeling that hasn’t faded for a single moment since. So she tells them all the other stories she has.

And she’ll tell them to him too, when he comes back to her. If he doesn’t remember, she’ll help him, she’ll give him every story she has; she practices them on Skye and Trip so that they are at their very best when she gives them back to him. She tells herself this every time a new symptom of oxygen deprivation pops into her head, every time a new nightmare scenario spins itself to life in her imagination.

Re-introducing him to the mother he adores.

The anger that he hides so well, only ever letting it bubble out around the edges, no longer controlled.

Having to re-explain to him about Ward and HYDRA, over and over again, and watching the light leave his eyes.

Saying something and waiting for him to fill in the gaps, and turning to see him looking just as confused as everyone else.

But whatever happens, she is going to be the guardian of the legacy of Leopold Fitz, even if that means explaining that legacy to Fitz himself. She needs him, her bright, brilliant best friend, and she’s going to get him back, if she has to remind him every day of the rest of their lives.

——————-

It’s been eight days, and she’s so lost in thought that she thinks that maybe she imagines it when she hears his breath catch; but she cannot possibly imagine the fluttering of his long eyelashes, not when she’s concentrating so hard on catching any movement he might make, and she stands in a rush, her chair falling back with a clatter that she’s sure will bring the others running. For right now though, it’s just her and her best friend and the last moments of uncertainty.

It’s been a very, very long time since she’s gone eight days without seeing his eyes, and even half-lidded in the poor lights of the medical room, they’re strikingly blue. The heart monitor picks up just slightly in the background as she leans over him, her hand reaching to grasp his.

"Fitz," she breathes into the space between them, and it’s all she can manage. She can’t breathe and it feels like there’s no oxygen left in the entire world as she waits for any sort of reaction, good or bad.

For what feels like an eternity, he looks up at her with no sound and no movement and she told herself she wasn’t going to cry, but the hollow feeling in her chest is expanding with each second and it is going to consume her. And then one corner of his mouth lifts slowly and softly into his familiar smirk, and it’s like the sun coming out after years and years of storms.

"Jemma," he whispers, right hand squeezing hers. It’s overwhelming, and she drops her head to rest it against his collarbone, fighting back tears. It’s minutes before she’s able to lift her face to his, to find him still smiling at her softly, reverently, like he cannot believe his eyes. There’s a million things she wants to say to him, but almost every one of them is catching in her throat.

"I’m very cross with you," she finally manages, and his smile grows slightly, his eyes alight.

"Thought you would be. Didn’t really count on being here to see it.” His voice is soft, rough with disuse, but so unmistakably his that it sets off fireworks in her chest to hear it again.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you go without a fight, did you?”

“No,” he says, and the smile slips from his face before he continues, “I don’t regret it, you know. You were worth saving.”

“So were you,” she replies, and she doesn’t want to argue, not now, not when she’s just gotten him back, his blue, blue eyes and her name on his lips, so she hugs him instead, as best she can. Later, she will argue with him about the value of his life and making decisions for her and a thousand other things, but right now she is going to hug him and listen to his solid heartbeat in his chest.

“Can you curl your toes?” she asks, flipping into doctor mode without releasing him, and watches as they bend slowly. It doesn’t mean he’s fine, and it might be a long time before his legs are strong enough to support his full weight, but the small action still makes her smile, tears leaking from her eyes onto his shirt.

“And you remember the team? Coulson, May, Skye? Agent Triplett?” he nods at each name, “You remember what happened?” another nod, “Your mum?”

“I’d have to be the world’s biggest cad to forget a mum as great as mine, Jemma,” he says, and she knows he’s trying to be funny, to comfort her, because he understands almost as well as she does what he could lose.

“Some things are fuzzy,” he admits even as she thinks that, and she pulls away from the hug to make eye contact with him.

“You remember all of them though?” he nods, “And you remember me? You remember what we are?” she asks, and she can’t breathe until he nods.

“Always,” he says, and she responds by pressing kisses to every part of his face she can reach. There’s no traces of blood and sweat and fear this time, and so she slows down slightly, enjoys the points of contact with his forehead, his cheek, the one she manages to sneak down on to his neck. Because if he remembers _her_ and _them_ and _the team_ , they can deal with whatever else comes their way. She’s worried about his left arm, and his definitions of _some things_ and _fuzzy_ , and a thousand other things, but they’re together and she’ll tell him the stories he needs as many times as he wants. She’s the guardian of his story, and she’ll tell it to him every time he asks.

“You know, a guy could get used to that,” Fitz says, and his smile is the best thing she has ever seen.

She hears Trip and Skye exclaim from the doorway, and she knows that soon they’ll have to shift back to the real world, with all it’s consequences and troubles and arguments. But she steals one more moment to press her lips softly to the corner of his. Not to tell him anything or make any decisions, but just because she wants to.

She doesn’t know what the next chapter of Leopold Fitz’s story, the story to which she has made herself expert and guardian and appreciator, holds, but she knows she’ll be there with him, writing her own story right next to his.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written a while ago, but it's rather short and I don't think it's very good (I wrote it in a rush for Fitz Friday), but I figured some people here might like to see it who didn't see it when I initially posted it on tumblr months ago. Yeah, so here it is.
> 
> Title from Matthew 25:21 by the Mountain Goats.


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